Monday, August 24, 2009
Violence is declining, argues psychologist Steven Pinker. What are we doing right?
But now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler. In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.
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Excellent point. I have long argued this. The world is steadily becoming less violent, more stable, and more prosperous. The decline in global poverty in recent years is breath taking.
ReplyDeleteyep sure except for the jooz.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I found that article to be utter new age bullshit. First of all, how can you compare primitive societies battling over very scarce resources to modern industrial societies where there is-or should be enough for everyone to survive? Also, there was actually very little statistical evidence, and it was very selective. And, it is unclear what the definition of violence is. The author writes about the chances of being killed by another man-but what about government or corporate policies that result in deaths? Does that count as being killed by another man, even though the deaths don't happen immediately?
ReplyDeleteIt is because we are becoming more collectively stupid
ReplyDeletePinker picks out Europe as evidence that the world is getting less violent. But what about other places? Africa, for instance? Was that a less violent place 500 years ago? Did something start happenning about 500 years ago to make Europe gradually more more peaceful and Africa more violent?
ReplyDeleteJoe, there has been amazing progress in Africa in recent years on violence, life expectancy, living standards and poverty. One extremely positive recent event is that WWIII (the great Congo war where maybe 5-7 million died) has significantly died down. So has the Sudanese civil war. While the genocide in Darfur hasn't stopped, it has slowed down. There have been green shoots in Zimbabwe as well.
ReplyDeleteanad: I was trying to make a point about how the author "proved" his thesis-and about how you can use statistics to prove anything. Let's use Africa as an example. You can "prove" Africa is less violent than it used to be by comparing it to the worst period in recent history-or you can "prove" Africa is more violent than it used to be by comparing it to its pre-colonial history...In the article, after a lengthy introduction filled with joy and wonder about the peaceful age we live in, the author presents us with half a dozen factoids to prove his point. One of them, naturally, is how Europe is less violent than it was centuries ago(although I'd like to see how he arrived at those figures with two world wars and the Holocaust-actually holocausts). But what about the rest of the world? And the implication I was trying to make was that some European countries, such as England, used imperialism to ease the problems that were causing violence in their own country-but that policy created greater violence in other lands.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure you are right. When the "Mongol" Moghul empire broke up in India in the 1700s, India saw a lot of war and violence. This is why the Brits were initially welcomed. They brought peace, low taxes, interstate commerse, safe roads and rails. Many Hindus felt that British rule was more respectful to Hindus than Muslim rule. The Brits, in many cases didn't govern directly, but allowed local nations to govern themselves while the British handled external security.
ReplyDeleteThe British actually propped up the old Moghul empire to a degree, and utilized it to maintain law and order around India. This is why India in the 1800s still had Pharsi Persian courts. The British retained Pharsi Persian as the language of commerse and law in India.
The independence movement didn't really take off until much later . . . at which point Indians were asking the Brits "what have you done for us lately?"
Africa had many nation states fighting interminable wars with each other. The lack of interstate commerse and safe roads greatly contributed to poverty and mass suffering. Life expectancy was very low.
Were there huge massacres and man made famines in Africa before colonization? I don't know of any on the scale that happen today-but I'm not an expert on African history...But even if there were, that doesn't negate my criticism of the article. Tossing out a few factoids about Europe out of context and use that as evidence that humanity is moving mysteriously toward an era of peace and brotherhood is just silly....And what is violence? Was it violence when Stalin caused a man made famine in the Ukraine? How about Anne Frank? She died of pneumonia. Or the Iraqis who died because of sanctions? Or a Palestinian baby who dies at a check point because she is denied modern medical care?
ReplyDelete<span>"Africa had many nation states fighting interminable wars with each other. The lack of interstate commerse and safe roads greatly contributed to poverty and mass suffering. Life expectancy was very low."</span>
ReplyDeleteOh yean anand, well I know African history, and I KNOW you are full of shit, just like you are about your own colonial era (which was never grown out of, just given over to people with darker complextions). I really am getting tired of the fucking lies you make out of thin air you little shit, you need to know when to stop posting you colonial ass licker.
<span><span>"Africa had many nation states fighting interminable wars with each other. The lack of interstate commerse and safe roads greatly contributed to poverty and mass suffering. Life expectancy was very low."</span>
ReplyDeleteOh yeah anand, well I know African history, and I KNOW you are full of shit, just like you are about your own colonial era (which was never grown out of, just given over to people with darker complextions). I really am getting tired of the fucking lies you make out of thin air you little shit, you need to know when to stop posting your colonial ass licking garbage.</span>